Prior workers in the art have developed apparatus capable of transporting, orienting, rectifying and in other appropriate ways positioning, etc. tablets (or capsules) such as are disclosed in the following U.S. Pat. Nos., which may be considered representative of the prior art:
2,787,786, R. J. Bartlett, CONVEYING APPARATUS PA1 2,859,689, A. Ackley, PELLET MARKING MACHINE PA1 2,931,292, C. E. Ackley, MARKING MACHINES PA1 2,982,234, C. E. Ackley and John Kane, METHOD OF PRINTING WAXED PELLETS, AND PRINTING INK PA1 3,026,792, J. J. Misket et al, APPARATUS FOR BRANDING UNIFORMLY-SHAPED ARTICLES PA1 3,042,183, C. E. Ackley, ARTICLE HANDLING APPARATUS PA1 3,200,556, C. E. Ackley, CAPSULE SEALING METHOD AND APPARATUS PA1 3,272,118, C. E. Ackley, ARTICLE MARKING MACHINE PA1 3,613,861, Alten E. Whitecar, CAPSULE ORIENTING MACHINE PA1 3,739,909, Garland et al, CAPSULE HANDLING APPARATUS AND METHOD PA1 3,838,766, Wagers, Jr. et al, CAPSULE INSPECTION APPARATUS AND METHOD PA1 3,868,900, Edward M. Ackley, CAPSULE PRECISION PRINTING APPARATUS AND METHOD PA1 3,871,295, Edward M. Ackley, CAPSULE ORIENTING APPARATUS AND METHOD OF SPIN PRINTING PA1 3,884,143, Edward M. Ackley, CONVEYOR LINK FOR TABLET PRINTING APPARATUS PA1 3,912,120, Hoppmann et al, CENTRIFUGAL METHOD OF SORTING AND ORIENTING PARTICULATE ARTICLES PA1 3,917,055, VandenBerg et al, CAPSULE RECTIFICATION APPARATUS PA1 3,931,884, Edward M. Ackley, APPARATUS FOR TRANSPORTING AND AND ORIENTING CAPSULES PA1 4,069,753, Edward M. Ackley, deceased, APPARATUS AND METHODS FOR THE RANDOM SPIN PRINTING OF CAPSULES
U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,931,884 and 4,069,753 show "spin printing" apparatus, and U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,785,786; 2,859,689; 3,026,792 and 3,424,082, show other apparatus and method for branding or printing indicia on the article.
Although the tablet orientation machinery of the prior art has operated satisfactorily in many applications, it has nevertheless been found that such machinery is capable of improvement.
Tablets introduced into a hopper for orientation and delivery to a printing station generally become randomly oriented. It therefore becomes necessary to uniformly orient such tablets, to assure proper printing of any indicia thereon.
Tablet orientation machinery capable of rectifying the tablets for printing has been developed, however such machinery is generally not capable of satisfactory operation at substantial rates of production.
As the production rate of the apparatus is increased either tablets begin to feed into the classifying means improperly, or not at all. The overall efficiency of such devices correspondingly decreases, since the number of properly classfied tablets delivered from the apparatus decreases.
The present apparatus represents an improvement over the prior art tablet orientation machines for many reasons, e.g. more versatile, greater efficiency and for other reasons as will become apparent from the further description. It provides a reliable, automatic and rapidly functioning device capable of rapidly and uniformly orienting a plurality of randomly fed tablets.
In view of these patents and a fairly advanced state of technology, the present machinery and method is quite unobvious and represents a further significant advance in the art.